Dear All

As you sow so shall you reap as some people might say.  There are two examples of this in the bulletin and they are linked.  Since 1999 the total council housing stock has shrunk from 3,180,000 to 1,870,000 in 2008.  Whilst waiting lists have increased - in the last year they increased by 96,000 in England.  Of course not all this stock is lost from the pool of social housing because some are now owned by Housing Associations.  But they are now not available to Local Authorities for waiting list or homelessness applicants.  And before I get loads of emails from irate Housing Associations I recognise that most, if not all, Housing Associations accept applicants from Local Authorities and many are in Choice Based Lettings schemes.  But the core of the issue is that the Local Authorities have the statutory duty to house the homeless and Housing Associations have the commercial duty to act in the best interests of their business.  Local Authorities are directly accountable to the electorate whereas Housing Associations are only accountable to their unelected board.

But I am drifting off the point.  The point is the stock is shrinking and demand is rising.

 
Then we have unemployment.  It is clear from the current recession that the growth in the economy - which led to better incomes and more jobs - was funded to a significant degree on debt (or credit as it is often more politely called).  This borrowing was fuelled by the rising value of housing which gave people the confidence to take out large loans because they were underpinned by an asset that increase in value far faster that the rate of inflation.  The minute that the housing asset started to lose value and or lenders refused to grant loans to buy property was the time when the process started to collapse.  Something has to give and jobs are what are giving.  Unemployment is rising and rapidly approaching two million.

Crisis tells us that within three months of losing the primary source of household income one third of households will lose their homes.  Only a small proportion of those households will be entitled to mortgage rescue.  As a side issue the Scottish Government has issued an interesting research report on mortgage rescue.  In a nutshell this says that it is expensive and only helps a few of the people who apply and has little impact on homelessness etc.  They recommend that much more effort goes into prevention and that rather than paying off debt the Local Authorities should buy the houses (though only through shared equity).  Moving even further aside the government have issued a consultation paper on allowing Local Authorities to build new housing outside of the Housing Revenue Account.  This would mean the asset would count has wholly owned by the council and all the income would be kept by the council without any restrictions on the rent charged.  Link this to mortgage rescue and we could have a winner.

But going back to the point if one third of the unemployed will lose their homes within three months then this will put huge pressure on the already scarce council housing stock.  Sadly, as Crisis points out, many will not qualify for help because they won't be in priority need, may not have a local connection and may even be found intentionally homeless.  All of which would be less of an issue if we had a viable alternative to owner occupation - but we don't.

There is also a little piece in there on the theme of lies, damned lies and statistics. Apparently Boris Johnson is counting all new house building towards his 50,000 affordable housing targets.  This will include new housing that replaces demolished old housing even where the number of new units is less that the number of old units. Naughty Boris.  Though I think it a bit rich that the labour party are saying this given the number of times the government has managed to recycle old initiatives as new ones. The point being is that we should always take the wrapping off before accepting the goods.

On that point we have the government declaring a recession and unemployment rising but the Central Office of Information has issued a statement that we can expect there to be a significant growth in employment.  I haven't had time to take the wrapping off of that one to see whether it makes sense in the current economic climate.

The National Aids Trust joins a long line of organisations publishing research that states the obvious.  They remind us that poor housing is bad for people.  The more disadvantaged/ill people are the worse poor housing is for them.  I refer back to my piece above on building more council housing and of earlier pieces on stopping selling off council houses.

Finally a good idea, well I think so anyway.  The LGA are recommending that we create jobs that will focus on improving the energy efficiency of our housing and also that create more renewable power.  This would have the immediate effect of reducing fuel costs of households and the long term effect of reducing our dependency on fossil fuels.  I wonder of Gordon will view it as a positive idea?

Until next week.

Yours

Dave